Return to Ravnica Team Sealed Event: Part 3

To be fair, only two of the three members were actually teenagers, but when you’re playing with someone as old as BoB!, it feels a little like we were Team Geriatric. My opponent was the youngest of the lot and had been a former student of BoB!’s wife, so they knew each other and exchanged pleasantries before the match. He was a running a Selesnya deck with the ultimate goal of hitting Armada Wurm. In game one, he reached that goal, but I immediately followed with a Supreme Verdict. After that I played a few fliers and won the game.
In the second game, he had a massive mana flood and I won easily. In the meantime, BoB!’s opponent had trounced him quickly, so it came down to Nick’s game. I don’t remember the exact details of the game, but I know Nick bricked on several draws and his opponent hit with a few creatures and was able to overwhelm him for the victory. That put us at 1-3 for the day, with the individual records of John 3-1, Nick 2-2, and BoB! 1-3. We followed the tourney with a celebratory beer and meal at Famous Dave’s, where we discussed strategies, cards, and our favorite moments of the tourney. We all agreed that it was a blast and we’re planning to try again the next time the store runs a team tourney.

Top 3 Annoyances

Reflecting back on the experience, these were the most annoying parts of the day.

3) We had to handwrite our decklists, including comprehensive sideboards, but didn’t register our card pool. Do I really care whether the four Stab Wound move from one opponents deck to another’s during the tourney? No. What I care about is that only one of those Stab Wounds came from the twelve packs and the other three came from someone’s deck box. In the spirit of the tournament, and because none of us play paper magic, we were honest about our card pool, but without verification, the temptation might be pretty high for the competitive players out there.

2) We were assigned positions (player A, B, C or 1, 2, 3) based on the order in which we paid. It was advertised as a choice we could make and we had planned to play BoB! 1, me 2, and Nick 3. I don’t know how much difference it would have made, but I’d like to see it included as a part of the strategy.

1) By far, the most annoying part of the day was the “gamer talk” that some of the players were lobbing about. If I ever hear another person say, “is this a keep or a snap keep?” again it will be too soon. I get it. You drew some nice cards. Get over yourself. I don’t need to know that you’ve been “grinding” or that you’re play was “next level.” It’s not so much what was said, but how it was said, as if these were unique and poignant words of wisdom from Bluemage McProTour himself.

Top 3 Cards

Nick – We talked a little about which cards we had the most fun with and Nick identified Deathrite Shaman. He felt that Auger Spree was probably the most valuable card in the deck, but the Shaman was the most fun to play.

BoB! – As one would expect, BoB! named Arrest as his most valuable card, but he also felt that Call of the Conclave and Grove of the Guardian did some work. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all was that BoB! finally came around on the keyrunes. He was talking about how powerful the Selesyna Keyrune had been and we informed him that one sat in his sideboard all tourney.

For me, the best card had to be Voidwielder, which provided a halt in tempo for the aggro decks, along with a surprisingly effective blocker. It certainly isn’t the flashiest card, but rarely was it a dead draw and often it was exactly what I needed.

One Response to Return to Ravnica Team Sealed Event: Part 3

Hey, nice job guys! You can tell I’m being sincere because you finished with a better record than we did (pretty sure). BoB! and I ended with the same record, though I got my win via intimidating the last opponent into no-showing.

If you all are ever heading back to Htown for an event make sure to post something about it ahead of time =]